1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for conveniently providing information to users via a network regarding public information that may require some protected information to be referenced to refine searches, such as ballot content, poll information and other information regarding elections and government.
2. Background Art
A key to democratic and representative government is an informed electorate. When interacting with government, citizens must often search through irrelevant data to find information that is pertinent and often must divulge personal information to increase efficiency. As an example, in many elections a large number of candidates vie for legislative, executive, and judicial offices at the federal, state, and local levels of government. In addition, complex ballot proposals relating to public initiatives, tax assessments and other issues frequently appear on ballots. Mass media information sources such as radio, television and newspapers cover broad geographic areas and focus on federal and state candidates and issues. Consequently, less media attention is given to local elections and local ballot proposals, many of which are almost completely ignored by the media. Voters must wade through information regarding many local candidates and ballot proposals that they do not have the opportunity to vote for to locate the candidates and ballot proposals that do appear on their ballots.
One problem encountered in prior art systems is that users with common attributes (e.g., a name is the common initial query) required the system to divulge information in the voter file to narrow the search parameters. In order to differentiate queries about similar attributes (e.g., when users with the same name living in different locations query the database) previous systems would display additional attributes to prompt the user to differentiate himself. These systems provided the user with other identifying information associated with the names, such as the city, the street of residence or the ZIP code. The excess information represented an unnecessary exposure of personal information and the system became exponentially difficult to navigate based on the recurrence of the original attribute queried in the database.
Government agencies have attempted to provide ballot data for major elections but a comprehensive system that provides a convenient way to access all local ballots, candidates and proposals has not been developed. In one election, ballot content information was made available based on identification of a location on a map corresponding to a voter's address. Many systems used ZIP code searches to access election information. However, ZIP codes do not directly correspond to the jurisdictions. Users needed to input their ZIP+4 codes, which are often not widely known. Other systems use a series of increasingly granular maps of progressively greater detail to allow users to select or “drill-down” to relevant ballot data, which required voters to visually recognize the geographical boundaries of their districts. Some systems use direct address searches, but address searches require a great deal of information and do not provide information on registration status. In another attempt to provide voters with information, electronic voter guides provide candidates with an opportunity to post biographical data and data relating to political issues in lieu of candidate websites. This approach has been problematic because many candidates (even those with campaign websites) fail to provide biographical data.
Campaign finance information required by the federal and state election laws is made available to the media and the voter. Voters in some states may access campaign finance information via the same mapping system that is used to identify candidates who are elected from a specific precinct or district. This process of searching by starting with wide-area maps and then “drilling down” by selecting smaller geographic regions within those maps is better suited to the needs of lobbyists, the media, and political candidates than to the needs of voters. Lobbyists, reporters, and candidates who are familiar with the geography of voting districts can use the drill-down mapping system to research candidate submissions and campaign finance information and get a broad view of the regional political activities. Individual citizens, however, find the same mapping system frustrating and difficult to use when they attempt to identify exactly which candidates and ballot proposals they will need to review.
There is a need for a simple and effective voter information system that can provide every voter with a jurisdiction-specific sample ballot before going to the polling place to cast a vote. There is also a need to provide better access to campaign literature and finance information, polling locations, instructions on how to use the voting machines, and information regarding campaign events in a single system. The system may be easy to use and may use no specialized knowledge of ZIP+4 codes or geographical boundaries of jurisdictions. The system may focus on the candidates and issues found on an individual voter's ballot. The system may display public information without compromising user information.
In order to provide this information, in the prior art, Applicant offered a system publicly that allowed voters to search a state voter registration database (e.g., a voter file) in order to query general election information data to generate a pre-processed partial sample ballot and candidate websites. The problems associated with this prior system is that it failed to identify a voter's polling location. It required substantial processing time to create pre-proposal sample ballots that were incomplete. It also was not easily scalable in that it could not accommodate a large quantity of data required for a complete ballot.
The problems noted above, and other problems relating to providing voter, election and other public information are addressed by applicant's invention as summarized below.